


Loss Ficlet: Clouds

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [9]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 12:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13998762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: NSFW-ish, but not graphic.This is unabashed fluff for the weekend. Who doesn’t love some fluff for the weekend? Aye? Aye.





	Loss Ficlet: Clouds

**Author's Note:**

> NSFW-ish, but not graphic.  
> This is unabashed fluff for the weekend. Who doesn’t love some fluff for the weekend? Aye? Aye.

**Loss (Modern AU) (Ficlet)**

**Clouds**

Jamie and I had taken a long weekend up to Lallybroch to celebrate Ian’s birthday. The sun was scorching hot, high in the sky and brutal. Jenny and Ian’s kids were screaming, whipping around a hose that was leaking a steady stream of cold water. All of us, save Jenny who was good about reapplying sunscreen, were pink to varying degrees. All of us, save Jenny who was almost painfully pregnant and as she said “ _depressingly teetotal_ ,” had been drinking to varying degrees of intoxication.

After eating my fill of the various things Jamie had grilled and getting sangria tipsy, I had taken up residence on a tartan picnic blanket next to Jamie’s niece Maggie. We pointed out shapes in clouds, named the birds that flew by, and shared handfuls of sickly-sweet gummy candies.

“What are the two of ye troublemakers up to?”  Jamie stood over us with his legs shoulder-width apart, hands crossed across his chest. I lifted my arm and laid it across my forehead to block out the sun.

“Lookin’ at the clouds, Uncle Jamie!” Maggie had said with an enormous toothless grin.

“Aye?” he’d questioned, lowering himself to the blanket next to me.  I turned my head, still shielding my eyes from the sun, to look at him. I felt like I was staring right into the sun.  The sun was staring right back at me. He had one arm draped over his stomach and his other just inches from mine. “Looks like yer Auntie Claire is also helpin’ to feed ye a kilo of sugar, then, too. Yer mam isna goin’ to thank her for that.”

I couldn’t help the stupid smile that stretched my lips.

 _Auntie_. I was used to it, but it still took my breath away to be part of a family.  To be part of _this_ family, especially.

We’d had a serious disagreement about his use of that word ( _auntie_ ) with Maggie and Young Jamie the first time he had said it.  Only a few weeks after we had decided that maybe we should be more than people who ate dinner together and had sex we went to Lallybroch to celebrate Maggie's birthday. We were opening presents when Jamie had used the word, casually as if it had no consequence. 

Maggie had thrown her arms around his neck, giving him kisses in unrestrained with her gratitude for the playset of ponies and glittery plastic grooming kit we had given her.  “ _Yer Auntie Claire picked that for ye, not me. So go give her kisses and cuddles_ ,” Jamie had laughed into Maggie’s pin-straight blonde hair.  

Jenny and I had shot each other looks and then shot Jamie a look.  

Ian had laughed and Jamie smirked. 

Maggie, following Jamie’s directive, had launched herself into my arms and wrapped her thin arms around my neck. We fought about it in the car on the way home - Jamie blithely brushing aside my concern that Maggie get _too attached_  to me. I had dramatic images of Maggie relating tales to a school guidance counselor someday about attachment issues stemming back to the time her Uncle Jamie forced her to call his strange girlfriend (who was maybe a doctor) “ _Auntie”_  at her birthday party when she was little only to never see or hear from the woman again.

When we returned to Lallybroch to celebrate the birth of the new baby a few weeks later Jamie had agreed not to say it again. But Maggie had taken to calling me _Auntie Claire_  without any further prompting. Shortly thereafter Young Jamie followed suit, blushing the first few times he said it.  

Even though I was not married to Jamie, I was now _Auntie Claire_. I felt a swell of pure joy in my chest whenever Maggie said it.

Jamie popped one of the gummy candies into his mouth. “Yer auntie here is verra good at seein’ shapes in the clouds.”

“Aye, she is,” Maggie agreed, giggling and kicking her feet when Jamie leaned over me, his weight pressing me down, to tickle Maggie’s sides. After a moment he returned to his original position on his back. He touched me then, his pinky finger hooking around my pinky finger.  

I held my breath and refocused my attention on a cloud that looked like a swan. The cloud was melting as it moved across the sky. As yet, its new shape was undefined.

The three of us laid for a long while pointing out shapes ( _a witch, a puppy, a Christmas tree, a genie in a lamp, a jellyfish_ ). Our game ceased only when Jenny, holding her belly and looking exhausted, called out to Maggie from across the lawn. Maggie immediately leaped up and gone running at a breakneck pace, shouting “ _Bye!_ ” over her shoulder. 

Jamie and I continued the game for a while as the sun set.

Jamie identified a moth. We argued about whether his “moth” was more properly classified as a “butterfly.” After the shape shifted listlessly mid-argument we called a truce and agreed to call it a dragonfly.

“That’s a porpoise. Over there. Definite porpoise, not a dolphin.” I pointed with my free hand. Jamie made a noise of agreement.

“This is called pareidolia, by the way.” He shifted a little and rolled onto his side to face me. Our pinky fingers remained intertwined.

“What is what now?” I asked, furrowing my brow and turning to him.

He leaned forward only slightly and brushed his lips over mine gently. He tasted like whisky and the char from the grilled steaks we had eaten earlier. “Lookin’ at the clouds, seein’ shapes. Pareidolia.”

“Where in the world did you learn that?” I whispered, feeling goosebumps prickle along my arms from wrist to elbows when his sun-warm fingers wound into the hem of my sundress. When a relatively modest portion of my thigh was exposed he marched fingers along the outside of it.

“Pub quiz.” His fingers did not stop and I sighed when he flattened a palm just above my knee. I laid completely still as his palm drifted up and over my thigh, his fingers spreading to cover more skin before squeezing me. He moved his hand and inspected the momentary white marks in my skin from his fingertips that immediately flushed with sunburn again.

I bent my leg at the knee, urging his hand to the south and to the outside. I could still hear Jenny wrangling the kids to go inside for the night.  “You’re being bad, Mr. Fraser.”

“Ye don’t need these; it’s sundown. Lemme see yer eyes,” he mumbled, reaching forward and slipping my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose. He dragged a finger over the tip of my nose and down the bow of my lips. He tapped my lower lip before removing his hand from my face. His hand returned to my thigh; this time I moved until his hand slipped north instead of south.

“Jamie, I can’t believe how you make me feel.” He was grinning, unabashedly enjoying the effect he was having on me.

“I canna believe ye’re mine to make feel any kinda way I want.” He paused, lifting his hand from my leg and smoothing my sundress back down. “Jenny’s lookin’ over here and I canna do what I want to ye here, even if it’s gonna get dark soon. Let’s kip over to the stables quick.”

I just stared, adjusting my sunglasses and crossing my legs at the thighs. “Not a chance, Fraser.”

He kissed me again, deeper this time.  I adjusted to turn into his mouth and slip my fingers into his hair. I could feel his smile bloom against my mouth before he pulled away again. “Yer drivin’ me mad with yer little sunburnt nose, yer eyes half-closed when I touch ye. Prancin’ ‘round all day in that damn short dress. I need to have ye. And like hell I’ll have ye in that house wi’ all those kids and my damn sister listenin’ to every sound.”

And that is how we ended up in the stables, my body pressed against a wall and my leg hitched up around his waist.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this.”  My words were shaky and my fingers dug into his shoulders.  He shushed me, lips along my jawline.  I was _panting_ against him.  With my face tucked into the rise of his shoulder into his neck, I could smell his skin through his shirt ( _tangy sweat touched by a hint of cologne and shampoo_ ). It mixed with the tang of horses, hay, and summertime.

“I dinna recall it takin’ much work at all to talk ye into _anythin’_ , Sassenach.” I responded by dragging my fingernails down the back of his arms.  He wasn’t wrong. “But if that’s the position yer gonna take I willna argue with ye.”

“Wise man.” My fingers found his belt, then the button on his shorts, and finally the zipper. I pushed the fabric aside covering him and took him into my hand.

“Ye drive me mad, Sassenach,” he groaned, working his lips from the curve of my cheek to my earlobe.

“They’re going to wonder where we are,” I mumbled when his fingers found the back of my knee and worked its way up to the real estate of my thigh that had started all of this.  

“So let ‘em use their wildest imaginations. They willna even come close to what I’m about to do to you.”

He was quiet for a few moments, his lips drawing a sigh from my throat. He pulled back, tilting his head to the side.

“Ye think that someday we’ll have a bairn… I mean you and me?” His question was out of the blue and I felt my knees go weak. Of course, we had in very oblique terms discussed children and marriage, but we were still on that razor-thin edge between _fun_ and _serious_.

“I don’t know,” I responded in a whisper, feeling his fingers push the skirt of my dress up further and further until it was bunched up above my waist. “I know you want children.”

“I want them, aye… _with you_ ,” he clarified smoothly, hand readjusting my thigh and straying for too long ( _one, two, three, four_ _moments_ ). “What do ye think of that?”

He kissed me before I could answer, his tongue tasting the corners of my mouth. “You want them... now?”

“No, idiot,” he laughed, lips in my hair now. I felt his hand slip my panties to the side. I laughed when he blew on my neck and tightened my grip on him. “Not now.”

“Then yes… someday… with you.”

When he slipped inside of me he sighed into my neck, his breath warm and humid against me.  

“Good,” he responded before we lost ourselves completely.


End file.
